Dream Sequencing

June 28, 2025:

Lately, I've been experiencing forms of strange, random serendipity in between dreaming and waking--that sweet spot in time when REM sleep (rapid eye movement) and collides with wide-open consciousness, when one is aware of both reality and unreality. Normally, the previous day's actions will spill into my dreamscape, forming some kind of story that incorporates other memories and images. Recurring or ongoing plots happen, sometimes in familiar sequence, but with somewhat different conclusions or revelations. What am I trying to tell myself? Am I telling on myself?

Instead of the usual, it's been rather unusual. Pleasant, but unusual.

It's all serendipity, these most casual and curious spots of moviegoing fluidity, or such as I want to call "it." In this sweet spot, particular pieces of media - so far films and songs - will play on shuffle and, often, integrate me into the play as both observer and character. Am I a character or am I a placeholder?

The most recent movie was Francis Ford Coppola's Tetro. I hadn't given it any thought whatsoever in time past, but here it was, in my mind, between dreaming and waking. Did I spot the DVD case's spine, which sits in a stack of other DVDs by my TV, at some point previous? Was that enough to bring about my space in its trailer, in its fuller scenes, and interactions with its actors and their roles in the story, separated and the same? Odd.

Maybe this is what a “slipstream” is. Maybe this is what Anthony Hopkins was getting at with his directorial effort. I'm referencing a deep and obscure cut that likely few have seen, of which I'm fortunate enough to be counted along with. I've never seen Slipstream on a big screen, but that's alright. It's alright, from time to time, to be lost in bewilderment, all alone.

This is a movie of solid-state bewilderment, only making sense to Sir Anthony Hopkins himself. Unlike David Lynch's Inland Empire, which came out around the same time, and which had an actual thread of a tale that was connected, even if loosely and strangely. Lynchian. Slipstream does everything but form a connection from points a to b to c. It replicates, in my opinion, media and memory association within REM and wake states. Clips pop up, dissolve, fade into one another, and form things new and old, much like a William Burroughs "cut up" text. Repetition, repetition, repetition. Anthony Hopkins stars in this too, and creates, and walks through, and rewrites his own life.

And death, of course.

Sometimes, if a movie makes technique and style the crystal clear name of its game, flavoring up a story that would've been boring in a traditional narrative, I appreciate its focus or lack thereof more than I normally would. They - colleagues - will say "style over substance" is bad. I say, sometimes, and if done carefully, style CAN BE substance. Style CAN BE story. How a story is told CAN BE as important as the story itself. More so? In some cases. Can that work too?

Occasionally.

Slipstream is on in the background as I type this entry. Choosing it and pressing play was a conscious decision, based on the serendipity of my dreams meeting waking "truth." Of my mind or my other self choosing, consciously perhaps, what movie I'll be relaying to myself as I come out of a nap. Or a full sleep. What is it called when one can control where and what can happen in a dream? No googling, please.

Tetro in my head, repeating its climax and the scenes I remember the most, on shuffle repeat as I act in it and watch from the outside. I'm in the theater, leaping sometimes into the screen and into the action, before jumping back into my seat.

All alone? With a movie, as fragmented as it is when in my strange trip, I'm never "alone." I'm with me, myself, and I. I'm with the screen and beyond.

I'm with the movies.